How to Keep Superintendent Turnover from Disrupting Student Progress

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Like drivers rubbernecking at a car accident, many people I know in education are watching the debacle unfolding in the Chicago Public Schools, where the school board recently quit en masse and the mayor seems intent on forcing out the superintendent.

Meanwhile, officials in New York City, home to America’s largest school district, are getting acclimated to their fifth leader in 10 years after the most recent superintendent abruptly resigned amid multiple investigations. In Atlanta, where I live, we’re on our fifth superintendent in the last decade as well.

Cincinnati; San Diego; Yonkers, New York, and other urban districts have also experienced turnover this year. According to ILO Group, roughly 20% of the superintendents in the largest 500 school districts change each year, an increase from the 14% to 16% range cited back in 2010 by the School Superintendents Association.

Amid all these changes in leadership, the education nonprofit I lead has learned to partner with superintendents while they are in place, as well as make sure that when turnover does happen, the churn doesn’t become a distraction and impede student progress. The key to success is making sure leadership is not held by a single person within a single organization — especially since most superintendents end up being short-term presences — but by many people who are stalwarts and have deep roots in the community. 

Here are three primary lessons we’ve learned: 

First, invest in community members. If the superintendent is the be-all and end-all for education leadership, a community will be decimated whenever a transition occurs. But if there is a deep bench of leaders, a change becomes more of a ripple and less of a tsunami. That’s one reason we prioritize creating and maintaining relationships with board of education members and school leaders, who are often at their posts long before and after any particular superintendent. They can stay focused on students’ day-to-day concerns and successes while leadership is being sorted out.

To understand the issues within neighborhood schools, we hold regular community dialogues and invest in a comprehensive fellowship to help parents and guardians get involved. Over the course of nine months, participants learn about the history of Atlanta Public Schools, explore student achievement trends and identify opportunities to partner with communities to award grant funds. This year, for example, our fellows awarded $150,000 to community-driven programs aimed at improving college and career readiness for marginalized youth. Over time, participants in the fellowship realize their power and use it to take on parent leadership roles at their children’s school and when meeting with officials to explore the levers that drive systemic change for all of Atlanta’s children.

These grassroots supporters helped our advocacy efforts during a superintendent search by building awareness about how critical it is for the Atlanta Board of Education to hire the right candidate. The fellows attended board meetings and other sessions to inform the community about why the district needs a superintendent with an appetite for change. 

This distributed model of leadership creates a broad base and reduces the chance that any single disruption will cause undue volatility for students, families and educators.

Second, engage families by decentralizing decision-making authority beyond the traditional school district. In Atlanta, public charter schools enable thousands of families to choose the school that is best for their children and insulate them from any tumult at the district level. Most of these schools are part of — yet have some distance from — the school district; charter schools can be authorized locally and approved by the school board.

Yet charters are not a panacea. Launching a new one takes years, and getting in can involve lotteries and waitlists. That’s why we developed a resource, the Atlanta Schools Data Project, to give Metro Atlanta parents a user-friendly way to access publicly available data about student progress and relevant priorities at their children’s schools. Parents can use this data to advocate for improvements at the school and district levels, or to find an alternative, such as through an intra-district transfer.This democratizes data in a way that helps parents understand whether and which public school is the best fit for their child, regardless of fit. 

By having more options and more information, families take back power. 

Third, establish goals and guardrails. New superintendents tend to conduct listening tours before unveiling their own strategic plan; months and sometimes years pass between the announcement of one superintendent’s departure and clarity about what the next one will prioritize. When this process goes quickly, it can lead to whiplash for a school district’s stakeholders; when it lags, it can lead to paralysis in schools and among community partners whose work with students or teachers relies on its alignment with district priorities.

In Atlanta and in cities such as Columbus, Ohio, and Philadelphia, school boards have voted to establish accountability policies — goals and guardrails — that focus on student outcomes.  In Atlanta, this policy grew out of a series of community conversations about transparency and a focus on students, not adults. Board members devote significant time each month to monitoring progress, and schools that do not meet academic growth goals are required to take significant action to drive improvement. As these parameters are data-driven, they are more objective than decisions that are influenced by the personal opinions or whims of a single leader.

Leaders come and go, and there is only so much that can be done to mitigate the resulting transitions. Taking these three steps can help minimize the impact a superintendent transition has on a community.

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